The Cowards of Industry

All my life I heard from people, the news media and movies about the “Titans of Industry”. Men and Women who take risk and dare to forge new paths in business. You know the people I am talking about. That person in your company that makes everyone sweat and sit up straight when they walk into the room. No one wants to get on their bad side for fear of losing their job or even worse, being blackballed in their industry. This person owns the room and the conversations there with in. They push the company forward with their bold, cut throat decisions.

At least that’s what I always thought, anyway. It turns out that they aren’t Titans at all and mostly just people scared to make waves. I started noticing this many years ago when Human Resource departments started to take over company policies. Many of these CEOs, Presidents and Chairmen knew these new policies were ridiculous and not conducive for a good workforce, but they caved in and allowed them to be implemented. Then I watched as HR slowly took over every company I worked for. They ruled the roost, and these so-called Titans did nothing. Page after page of politically correct nonsense became the law of the land and has ruin many formally great places to work. Now we’ve moved on to an all new issue, the dreaded Covid-19.  At first, I understood some concern. This thing was a little unknown, though in my opinion it was mostly hyped, and it was probably smart to be cautious. I don’t think the shutdowns were necessary at all but a making your employees aware and asking anyone who is feeling sick to stay home, is not a bad thing. It’s the same thing most companies do for the flu every year. A little caution is not what we got. These companies folded like a house of cards and many shut their doors. This cost the companies millions and their employees lost jobs. Sure, the government over paid unemployment benefits but those took a few weeks to kick in and there are people that still haven’t got theirs. Not to mention it will take months if not years for some of these jobs to come back and what will these people do when that fat unemployment extra runs out? The companies that did stay open soon implemented rules on their employees that make no sense.

• You must wear a mask at all times.
• You must wear gloves at all times.
• You must wipe down every surface every fifteen minutes.
• You must stay six feet apart at all times.

They started doing stuff like stacking boxes in front of counters and desks to keep people apart. Hanging signs everywhere telling people the rules and to wash their hands. Talk about not having any faith in your employees. If you think the people that work for you are so dumb that they won’t wash their hands unless you they see at least five or six signs coming in and out of the bathroom, then you might want to get some new employees. As for the other new rules, hot masks and gloves aren’t good for anyone’s health. They over heat your and lower your oxygen levels, which can affect your immune system. There is no way I would force someone to wear those things while trying to do their jobs. Not to mention, they really aren’t doing anything to help. If there is something out there you can catch, you’re probably more likely to get it because you are constantly touching your face to adjust the hot, uncomfortable mask on it. Even better some of these companies have now start forcing their customers to wear them to come in and buy their products. Talk about bad customer care.

“We want your business, but put on this nice hazmat suit on first.”

Where are the Titans? Where are these leaders of industry who should be standing up for their employees and customers? Very few of these people stood up against this over reach of government power of everyone’s rights. These are the people that have the power and the money to do so, but they have not. Most of the people I saw fight back are small businesses. People who are so scared of loosing their business that they stepped up and took a risk. Many of whom have been jailed and had their licenses stripped. Elon Musk is the one CEO of a large company that I’ve seen stand up to this and you saw what happened, the government caved. The government knows they can’t push him around and that he has the money and power to push back. With that said, I here he is still going to impose the above nonsense on his employees but at this point, just fighting to reopen is a step in the right direction.

My point to all this is, we need those Titans back now more than ever. We need the people who will fight off government over reach. Someone to stand up and say, “ENOUGH! We are going back to work and getting people’s lives back.” We need the Titans of Industry from days long ago, not the Cowards of Industry we have today.